All that Chinese oil traders want for Christmas is a futures contract

Unlike Mariah Carey, all Yuan Quwei wants for Christmas is to trade oil futures on a Chinese exchange.

She's among the mass of speculators that have pumped trillions of yuan into the country's fledgling commodities bourses, trading in everything from eggs to iron ore futures with extraordinary intensity. She's now waiting for the launch of China's long-delayed domestic crude contracts, and hoping it'll be in time for Christmas.

“Oil futures in Shanghai would be a very, very interesting product and I can't wait for them,” Yuan, 48, said by phone. “An official launch during Christmas would be appropriate. The western market would be quiet and allow the Shanghai exchange as well as Chinese investors to adjust in the early days.”

Few derivatives have generated quite so much hype as China's yuan-denominated oil futures. Mooted more than two decades ago and since postponed, shelved and re-born, they're closer than ever to finally starting. For the first time, the world's biggest oil buyer may open a commodity futures to foreign investors as it looks to wrest control over pricing from international benchmarks and promote the use of China's currency in global trade.

The Shanghai Futures Exchange last week said a fifth round of testing had passed smoothly while the State Council was said to have given its approval for the futures to start, one of the final regulatory hurdles to listing. While they've never progressed as far before, there's still no official start date, and neither the exchange nor the securities regulator will confirm when that may be. ...

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